XVII
THE BOMB MAKER
We stared at each other in blank awe, at the various parts, so innocentlooking in the heaps on the table, now safely separated, but together acombination ticket to perdition.
"Who do you suppose could have sent it?" I blurted out when I found myvoice, then, suddenly recollecting the political and legal fight thatCarton was engaged in at the time, I added, "The white slavers?"
"Not a doubt," he returned laconically. "And," he exclaimed, bringingdown both hands vigorously in characteristic emphasis on the arms ofhis office chair, "I've got to win this fight against the vice trust,as I call it, or the whole work of the district attorney's office inclearing up the city will be discredited--to say nothing of the riskthe present incumbent runs at having such grateful friends about thecity send marks of their affection and esteem like this."
I knew something already of the situation, and Carton continuedthoughtfully: "All the powers of vice are fighting a last-ditch battleagainst me now. I think I am on the trail of the man or men higher upin this commercialised-vice business--and it is a business, bigbusiness, too. You know, I suppose, that they seem to have a string ofhotels in the city, of the worst character. There is nothing that theywill stop at to protect themselves. Why, they are using gangs of thugsto terrorise any one who informs on them. The gunmen, of course, hate asnitch worse than poison. There have been bomb outrages, too--nearly abomb a day lately--against some of those who look shaky and seem to belikely to do business with my office. But I'm getting closer all thetime."
"How do you mean?" asked Kennedy.
"Well, one of the best witnesses, if I can break him down by pressureand promises, ought to be a man named Haddon, who is running a place inthe Fifties, known as the Mayfair. Haddon knows all these people. I canget him in half an hour if you think it worth while--not here, butsomewhere uptown, say at the Prince Henry."
Kennedy nodded. We had heard of Haddon before, a notorious character inthe white-light district. A moment later Carton had telephoned to theMayfair and had found Haddon.
"How did you get him so that he is even considering turning state'sevidence?" asked Craig.
"Well," answered Carton slowly, "I suppose it was partly through acabaret singer and dancer, Loraine Keith, at the Mayfair. You know younever get the truth about things in the underworld except in pieces. Asmuch as any one, I think we have been able to use her to weave a webabout him. Besides, she seems to think that Haddon has treated hershamefully. According to her story, he seems to have been lavishingeverything on her, but lately, for some reason, has deserted her.Still, even in her jealousy she does not accuse any other woman ofwinning him away."
"Perhaps it is the opposite--another man winning her," suggested Craigdryly.
"It's a peculiar situation," shrugged Carton. "There is another man. Asnearly as I can make out there is a fellow named Brodie who does adance with her. But he seems to annoy her, yet at the same timeexercises a sort of fascination over her."
"Then she is dancing at the Mayfair yet?" hastily asked Craig.
"Yes. I told her to stay, not to excite suspicion."
"And Haddon knows?"
"Oh, no. But she has told us enough about him already so that we canworry him, apparently, just as what he can tell us would worry theothers interested in the hotels. To tell the truth, I think she is adrug fiend. Why, my men tell me that they have seen her take just asniff of something and change instantly--become a willing tool."
"That's the way it happens," commented Kennedy.
"Now, I'll go up there and meet Haddon," resumed Carton. "After I havebeen with him long enough to get into his confidence, suppose you twojust happen along."
Half an hour later Kennedy and I sauntered into the Prince Henry, whereCarton had made the appointment in order to avoid suspicion that mightarise if he were seen with Haddon at the Mayfair.
The two men were waiting for us--Haddon, by contrast with Carton, aweak-faced, nervous man, with bulgy eyes.
"Mr. Haddon," introduced Carton, "let me present a couple of reportersfrom the Star--off duty, so that we can talk freely before them, I canassure you. Good fellows, too, Haddon."
The hotel and cabaret keeper smiled a sickly smile and greeted us witha covert, questioning glance.
"This attack on Mr. Carton has unnerved me," he shivered. "If any onedares to do that to him, what will they do to me?"
"Don't get cold feet, Haddon," urged Carton. "You'll be all right. I'llswing it for you."
Haddon made no reply. At length he remarked: "You'll excuse me for amoment. I must telephone to my hotel."
He entered a booth in the shadow of the back of the cafe, where therewas a slot-machine pay-station. "I think Haddon has his suspicions,"remarked Carton, "although he is too prudent to say anything yet."
A moment later he returned. Something seemed to have happened. Helooked less nervous. His face was brighter and his eyes clearer. Whatwas it, I wondered? Could it be that he was playing a game with Cartonand had given him a double cross? I was quite surprised at his nextremark.
"Carton," he said confidently, "I'll stick."
"Good," exclaimed the district attorney, as they fell into aconversation in low tones.
"By the way," drawled Kennedy, "I must telephone to the office in casethey need me."
He had risen and entered the same booth.
Haddon and Carton were still talking earnestly. It was evident that,for some reason, Haddon had lost his former halting manner. Perhaps, Ireasoned, the bomb episode had, after all, thrown a scare into him, andhe felt that he needed protection against his own associates, who werequick to discover such dealings as Carton had forced him into. I roseand lounged back to the booth and Kennedy.
"Whom did he call?" I whispered, when Craig emerged perspiring from thebooth, for I knew that that was his purpose.
Craig glanced at Haddon, who now seemed absorbed in talking to Carton."No one," he answered quickly. "Central told me there had not been acall from this pay-station for half an hour."
"No one?" I echoed almost incredulously. "Then what did he do?Something happened, all right."
Kennedy was evidently engrossed in his own thoughts, for he saidnothing.
"Haddon says he wants to do some scouting about," announced Carton,when we rejoined them. "There are several people whom he says he mightsuspect. I've arranged to meet him this afternoon to get the first partof this story about the inside working of the vice trust, and he willlet me know if anything develops then. You will be at your office?"
"Yes, one or the other of us," returned Craig, in a tone which Haddoncould not hear.
In the meantime we took occasion to make some inquiries of our ownabout Haddon and Loraine Keith. They were evidently well known in theselect circle in which they travelled. Haddon had many curiouscharacteristics, chief of which to interest Kennedy was his speedmania. Time and again he had been arrested for exceeding the speedlimit in taxicabs and in a car of his own, often in the past withLoraine Keith, but lately alone.
It was toward the close of the afternoon that Carton called uphurriedly. As Kennedy hung up the receiver, I read on his face thatsomething had gone wrong.
"Haddon has disappeared," he announced, "mysteriously and suddenly,without leaving so much as a clue. It seems that he found in his officea package exactly like that which was sent to Carton earlier in theday. He didn't wait to say anything about it, but left. Carton isbringing it over here."
Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Carton himself deposited thepackage on the laboratory table with an air of relief. We lookedeagerly. It was addressed to Haddon at the Mayfair in the samedisguised handwriting and was done up in precisely the same fashion.
"Lots of bombs are just scare bombs," observed Craig. "But you nevercan tell."
Again Kennedy had started to dissect.
"Ah," he went on, "this is the real thing, though, only a littledifferent from the other. A dry battery gives a spark when the lid isslipped back. See
, the explosive is in a steel pipe. Sliding the lidoff is supposed to explode it. Why, there is enough explosive in thisto have silenced a dozen Haddons."
"Do you think he could have been kidnapped or murdered?" I asked. "Whatis this, anyhow--gang-war?"
"Or perhaps bribed?" suggested Carton.
"I can't say," ruminated Kennedy. "But I can say this: that there is atlarge in this city a man of great mechanical skill and practicalknowledge of electricity and explosives. He is trying to make sure ofhiding something from exposure. We must find him."
"And especially Haddon," Carton added quickly. "He is the missing link.His testimony is absolutely essential to the case I am building up."
"I think I shall want to observe Loraine Keith without being observed,"planned Kennedy, with a hasty glance at his watch. "I think I'll droparound at this Mayfair I have heard so much about. Will you come?"
"I'd better not," refused Carton. "You know they all know me, andeverything quits wherever I go. I'll see you soon."
As we drove in a cab over to the Mayfair, Kennedy said nothing. Iwondered how and where Haddon had disappeared. Had the powers of evilin the city learned that he was weakening and hurried him out of theway at the last moment? Just what had Loraine Keith to do with it? Wasshe in any way responsible? I felt that there were, indeed, no boundsto what a jealous woman might dare.
Beside the ornate grilled doorway of the carriage entrance of theMayfair stood a gilt-and-black easel with the words, "Tango Tea atFour." Although it was considerably after that time, there was a lineof taxi-cabs before the place and, inside, a brave array oflate-afternoon and early-evening revellers. The public dancing hadceased, and a cabaret had taken its place.
We entered and sat down at one of the more inconspicuous of the littleround tables. On a stage, at one side, a girl was singing one of thelatest syncopated airs.
"We'll just stick around a while, Walter," whispered Craig. "Perhapsthis Loraine Keith will come in."
Behind us, protected both by the music and the rustle of people comingand going, a couple talked in low tones. Now and then a word floatedover to me in a language which was English, sure enough, but not of akind that I could understand.
"Dropped by a flatty," I caught once, then something about a"mouthpiece," and the "bulls," and "making a plant."
"A dip--pickpocket--and his girl, or gun-moll, as they call them,"translated Kennedy. "One of their number has evidently been picked upby a detective and he looks to them for a good lawyer, or mouth-piece."
Besides these two there were innumerable other interesting glimpsesinto the life of this meeting-place for the half-and underworlds. Amotion in the audience attracted me, as if some favourite performerwere about to appear, and I heard the "gun-moll" whisper, "LoraineKeith."
There she was, a petite, dark-haired, snappy-eyed girl, chic, wellgroomed, and gowned so daringly that every woman in the audience enviedand every man craned his neck to see her better. Loraine wore atight-fitting black dress, slashed to the knee. In fact, everything wascalculated to set her off at best advantage, and on the stage, atleast, there was something recherche about her. Yet, there was alsosomething gross about her, too.
Accompanying her was a nervous-looking fellow whose washed-out face wasparticularly unattractive. It seemed as if the bone in his nose wasgoing, due to the shrinkage of the blood-vessels. Once, just before thedance began, I saw him rub something on the back of his hand, raise itto his nose, and sniff. Then he took a sip of a liqueur.
The dance began, wild from the first step, and as it developed, Kennedyleaned over and whispered, "The danse des Apaches."
It was acrobatic. The man expressed brutish passion and jealousy; thewoman, affection and fear. It seemed to tell a story--the struggle oflove, the love of the woman against the brutal instincts of the thug,her lover. She was terrified as well as fascinated by him in his madtemper and tremendous superhuman strength. I wondered if the danceportrayed the fact.
The music was a popular air with many rapid changes, but through allthere was a constant rhythm which accorded well with the abandon of theswaying dance. Indeed, I could think of nothing so much as of BillSykes and Nancy as I watched these two.
It was the fight of two frenzied young animals. He would approachstealthily, seize her, and whirl her about, lifting her to hisshoulder. She was agile, docile, and fearful. He untied a scarf andpassed it about her; she leaned against it, and they whirled giddilyabout. Suddenly, it seemed that he became jealous. She would run; hefollow and catch her. She would try to pacify him; he would become moreenraged. The dance became faster and more furious. His violent effortsseemed to be to throw her to the floor, and her streaming hair now madeit seem more like a fight than a dance. The audience hung breathless.It ended with her dropping exhausted, a proper finale to this lowestand most brutal dance.
Panting, flushed, with an unnatural light in their eyes, they descendedto the audience and, scorning the roar of applause to repeat theperformance, sat at a little table.
I saw a couple of girls come over toward the man.
"Give us a deck, Coke," said one, in a harsh voice.
He nodded. A silver quarter gleamed momentarily from hand to hand, andhe passed to one girl stealthily a small white-paper packet. Otherscame to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an established thing.
"Who is that?" asked Kennedy, in a low tone, of the pickpocket back ofus.
"Coke Brodie," was the laconic reply.
"A cocaine fiend?"
"Yes, and a lobbygow for the grapevine system of selling the dope underthis new law."
"Where does he get the supply to sell?" asked Kennedy, casually.
The pickpocket shrugged his shoulders.
"No one knows, I suppose," Kennedy commented to me. "But he gets it inspite of the added restrictions and peddles it in little packets,adulterated, and at a fabulous price for such cheap stuff. The habit isspreading like wildfire. It is a fertile means of recruiting theinmates in the vice-trust hotels. A veritable epidemic it is, too.Cocaine is one of the most harmful of all habit-forming drugs. It usedto be a habit of the underworld, but now it is creeping up, andgradually and surely reaching the higher strata of society. One thingthat causes its spread is the ease with which it can be taken. Itrequires no smoking-dens, no syringe, no paraphernalia--only the drugitself."
Another singer had taken the place of the dancers. Kennedy leaned overand whispered to the dip.
"Say, do you and your gun-moll want to pick up a piece of change to getthat mouthpiece I heard you talking about?"
The pickpocket looked at Craig suspiciously.
"Oh, don't worry; I'm all right," laughed Craig. "You see that fellow,Coke Brodie? I want to get something on him. If you will frame thatsucker to get away with a whole front, there's a fifty in it."
The dip looked, rather than spoke, his amazement. Apparently Kennedysatisfied his suspicions.
"I'm on," he said quickly. "When he goes, I'll follow him. You keepbehind us, and we'll deliver the goods."
"What's it all about?" I whispered.
"Why," he answered, "I want to get Brodie, only I don't want to figurein the thing so that he will know me or suspect anything but a plainhold-up. They will get him; take everything he has. There must besomething on that man that will help us."
Several performers had done their turns, and the supply of the drugseemed to have been exhausted. Brodie rose and, with a nod to Loraine,went out, unsteadily, now that the effect of the cocaine had worn off.One wondered how this shuffling person could ever have carried throughthe wild dance. It was not Brodie who danced. It was the drug.
The dip slipped out after him, followed by the woman. We rose andfollowed also. Across the city Brodie slouched his way, with an evidentpurpose, it seemed, of replenishing his supply and continuing his roundof peddling the stuff.
He stopped under the brow of a thickly populated tenement row on theupper East Side, as though this was his destination. There he stood atthe gate that led
down to a cellar, looking up and down as if wonderingwhether he was observed. We had slunk into a doorway.
A woman coming down the street, swinging a chatelaine, walked close tohim, spoke, and for a moment they talked.
"It's the gun-moll," remarked Kennedy. "She's getting Brodie off hisguard. This must be the root of that grapevine system, as they call it."
Suddenly from the shadow of the next house a stealthy figure sprang outon Brodie. It was our dip, a dip no longer but a regular stick-up man,with a gun jammed into the face of his victim and a broad hand over hismouth. Skilfully the woman went through Brodie's pockets, her nimblefingers missing not a thing.
"Now--beat it," we heard the dip whisper hoarsely, "and if you raise aholler, we'll get you right, next time."
Brodie fled as fast as his weakened nerves would permit his shaky limbsto move. As he disappeared, the dip sent something dark hurtling overthe roof of the house across the street and hurried toward us.
"What was that?" I asked.
"I think it was the pistol on the end of a stout cord. That is afavourite trick of the gunmen after a job. It destroys at least a partof the evidence. You can't throw a gun very far alone, you know. Butwith it at the end of a string you can lift it up over the roof of atenement. If Brodie squeals to a copper and these people are caught,they can't hold them under the pistol law, anyhow."
The dip had caught sight of us, with his ferret eyes in the doorway.Quickly Kennedy passed over the money in return for the motley array ofobjects taken from Brodie. The dip and his gun-moll disappeared intothe darkness as quickly as they had emerged.
There was a curious assortment--the paraphernalia of a drug fiend, oldletters, a key, and several other useless articles. The pickpocket hadretained the money from the sale of the dope as his own particularhonorarium.
"Brodie has led us up to the source of his supply," remarked Kennedy,thoughtfully regarding the stuff. "And the dip has given us the key toit. Are you game to go in?"
A glance up and down the street showed it still deserted. We wormed ourway in the shadow to the cellar before which Brodie had stood. Theoutside door was open. We entered, and Craig stealthily struck a match,shading it in his hands.
At one end we were confronted by a little door of mystery, barred withiron and held by an innocent enough looking padlock. It was this lock,evidently, to which the key fitted, opening the way into thesubterranean vault of brick and stone.
Kennedy opened it and pushed back the door. There was a little squarecompartment, dark as pitch and delightfully cool and damp. He lighted amatch, then hastily blew it out and switched on an electric bulb whichit disclosed.
"Can't afford risks like that here," he exclaimed, carefully disposingof the match, as our eyes became accustomed to the light.
On every side were pieces of gas-pipe, boxes, and paper, and on shelveswere jars of various materials. There was a work-table littered withtools, pieces of wire, boxes, and scraps of metal.
"My word!" exclaimed Kennedy, as he surveyed the curious scene beforeus, "this is a regular bomb factory--one of the most amazing exhibitsthat the history of crime has ever produced."